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As is well known, Esther 1,9 raises a historical problem by identifying the wife of King Ahasuerus as Vashti while in Greek sources his wife is Amestris.1 Most scholars simply accept the name Vashti as a symbolic name2 or an honorific title suitable for any queen.3 Shea and Wright, however, proposed that Vashti and Amestris are the same person,4 while Gordis argued that the name Esther might be an apocopated form of the name Amestris.5 Against these theses, Fox and Levenson have recently reasserted an old argument that Persian »chronology ... refutes the identification [of Amestris] with either of Ahasuerus's queens.«6 To be specific, while the book of Esther dates the removal of Vashti and the coronation of Esther to 483 and 480 B.C.E., respectively,7 »Amestris accompanied Xerxes to Sardis in 480 and was still acting very much as queen.«8 Citing two paragraphs in Herodotus (vii. 114; ix. 112), Fox lists the biblical claim that Esther, not Amestris, was Xerxes' queen among the »inaccuracies« in the book of Esther.9 If Fox is right, Herodotus portrays Amestris during a date (479 B.C.E.), at a place (Sardis), and in a specific social role (queen), all of which conflict with the biblical story. In response, this paper argues from Herodotus that inaccuracies plague the claims of Fox and Levenson and that the evidence supports a more carefully nuanced view of the matter.10
I.
»... Arsames the son of Darius and of Artystone the daughter of Cyrus commanded the Arabians and Ethiopians ...« (vii. 69; cf. vii. 72. 10, 78)
»The following were their commanders: of the Utians and Mycians, Arsamenes son of Darius; of the Paricanians, Siromitres son of Oeobazus.« (vii. 68 )26
In sum, in introducing military leaders for the first time Herodotus virtually always gives the commander's name as »X son of Y (and Z).« That consistent pattern strongly supports GT above in the case of vii. 61 (»Otanes son of Amestris«). Put differently, to accept ST by appeal to the name Amestris later in the narrative history is wrongly to overrule clear evidence from the text's immediate context by an appeal to evidence external to it.
One possible objection to the preference for GT needs to be addressed. Notwithstanding the above stylistic observation, one...